The present invention relates to a telephone switching adapter for automatic switching of plural pieces of terminal equipment onto the same telephone line.
A conventional facsimile receiving unit, which is connected to the general telephone line and set in the standby mode, will be automatically engaged upon incoming ringing signals and immediately send back a particular electronic acknowledgment signal to the calling party. This electronic acknowledgment signal can appear to be very strange when heard by a calling party who expected a conventional ring back tone, wanting to speak with a particular called party and not to send to the facsimile device. This can result in confusion to the calling party whose continuing attempts to reach a particular called party are constantly defeated by the facsimile receiving unit intercepting the call. This tendency will have important problems for future home communication systems.